2015-2018 was an exciting time of exploring and envisioning a larger purpose for Evergreen Leaders. Each of the last four years I’ve traveled to Thailand to attend either a conference or a retreat for further training. In addition I took two trips to Egypt and one each to Belize and Congo, in the course of exploring the coaching movement on a global level and offering my skills as a cross-cultural coach and as a trainer, leading several workshops. Over the last three years, my wife and I began to explore the possibility of living overseas for a year with our family.

We considered Thailand, especially— what a lovely place. Belize and Congo are always in our hearts! But as time passed a specific calling from Egypt, land of the pyramids and pharaohs, became clear to us. After our exploration trip with all the kids in October, 2018, my wife said, “Well, I’m not infatuated with it.” We’re not big-city people, and there are aspects of life in Cairo that will be challenging. We are headed there with our eyes wide open.

However, our skills are needed. In particular, I’ll be helping North Africa Middle East Coaching Network get more established, working as a mentor-coach for their recent trainees, and helping to train more coaches.

We’re excited about partnering with Tamer Isaac in his vision there, and we invite you to talk with us more about it. Whether you’re working with a foundation, a church or a private individual who would like to see a complete grant proposal, I’ll be happy to share that with you.

For this year, I won’t be going back to Thailand. I’m even passing up a trip to Asheville, NC. A majority of Evergreen Leaders resources will be going to this project for 2019 and 2020 as we prepare to live in the land of the Nile River.

Headed into 2018 I'm very excited. We're adding two major coaching programs: The Sermon Coach and Personal Change Fitness. We're also still in serious talks about doing coach training in Cairo, Egypt.

We've traveled a bit less this year, but I think sometimes you have to pull back to be ready to move forward again. I'm glad to say that the travel budget has some money in it... more is needed if we're going to be able to do a major trip in the late winter, but we're close, and that's exciting too.

More frequent updates do come from me-- I have a monthly encouragement email you can get, just to hear something positive, and I've done a good job of sending a regular monthly update email, as well as a paper letter twice a year or so. If you'd like to track more closely, I recommend sending me an email to ask to be part of those lists.

Evergreen Leaders teams are heading out in the fall of 2016 to offer coaching, training and general encouragement support onsite for mission leaders.

In October, Adam, Christopher and Victor all hope to go to Egypt; while in November, Adam, Bryan and Abby team up to go to Belize.

These are great opportunities for us to "help nonprofits thrive" by giving leaders vital support. You can help us, by donating to our Travel Fund! And if you want to know more before you give, email adamf@evergreenleaders.org to start the conversation!

I am pleased to have Christopher Beachy as the newest member on our team at Evergreen Leaders. I’ve asked Christopher to consider getting training in Foundational Coaching Skills (FOCOS) so that he can be part of our team not only in an administrative assistant capacity but, as we grow, he’ll be able to serve our clients directly by providing coaching for other nonprofit leaders.

One of my personal goals as a leadership coaching professional is to begin to cultivate the next generation of coaches; finding young men and women in their late twenties and thirties who have great potential to serve people this way, and working with them to get the training needed to put them in a position to coach professionally. I observe that Christopher is already a really good listener, and I trust that the CMI training program I’ve encouraged him to attend is an excellent value to hone that listening skill, for his life over the long term, no matter how long he’s part of the Evergreen team. I’m excited about investing personal time and energy into his professional development and I invite you to partner with us in this venture.

The program Christopher is raising money for is of the highest quality and an excellent value, anywhere else it would cost three or four times more money. Your partnership by investing in this FOCOS training with Evergreen Leaders has potential to pay dividends for hundreds of people over future decades as Christopher puts these new skills into practice, both in his work with Evergreen Leaders and beyond.

We nee to raise $750 to complete this project by August 15. We need to find four donors at $100 and 7 at $50 to complete the project. You can give via our donate button on this website. Thanks for your support!

On October 30 at noon at Maple Indian in Goshen (delicious Indian food!) Evergreen Leaders is hosting a luncheon for people in the area to meet our board member Carol Fesco. Ms. Fesco is a veteran Director of Development. She raises a seven figure amount annually for Horizon House of Peru. Most of her funds come from one rural county in Illinois not unlike Elkhart County in Indiana.

Ms. Fesco uses a unique approach which includes very little in the way of Events -- she doesn't do a lot of golf tournaments or rubber duckie river races. Instead, she employs a process called GreenLight Fundraising which is a concept designed by Rich Foss and detailed in his book by the same name.

Attendees will hear how Ms. Fesco has used Foss' techniques to raise money for her charity, and each will receive a copy of the book "Greenlight Fundraising" as a gift with registration.

Evergreen Leaders' current CEO Adam Fleming is a leadership coach and is preparing to begin a new group in the Elkhart Co. area to meet monthly to work to establish Greenlight Fundraising as a core component of the development process for area nonprofits. You will have an opportunity to hear about this new group beginning in January of 2016.

You are invited to attend the luncheon with Ms. Fesco! Cost is $25, please bring cash or a check made out to Evergreen Leaders.